- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Money
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 W. & R. Chambers and the Market for Print
- I Organizing a Proper System of Publishing
- 2 Industrial Book Production
- 3 Reaching a National Market
- 4 Production and Steam Power
- 5 New Formats for Information
- 6 Reaching an Overseas Market
- 7 A Modern Printing Establishment
- II Railways and Competition
- 8 The Coming of the Railways
- 9 Centralizing Business in Edinburgh
- 10 Routledge and the New Competition
- 11 Railway Bookstalls
- 12 Instruction in the Railway Marketplace
- 13 The Dignitaries of the Trade Take on Routledge
- III Steamships and Transatlantic Business
- 14 Transatlantic Opportunities
- 15 Getting to Know the American Market
- 16 The Dissemination of Cheap Instruction
- 17 A New Spirit of Engagement
- 18 Building Relationships with Boston and Philadelphia
- 19 Piracy and Shipwreck!
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Routledge and the New Competition
Routledge and the New Competition
- Chapter:
- (p.123) 10 Routledge and the New Competition
- Source:
- Steam-Powered Knowledge
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
This chapter considers George Routledge as a man who would soon be virtually synonymous with railway publishing. Routledge, who would transform the public's expectation of cheap reading material, established a reputation in cheap literature by dealing in remainders, the stock that remained after a publisher had given up hope of selling any more copies. Both as bookseller and publisher, he pursued the strategy of high sales of cheap works, where the volume of sales would compensate for the small profit on individual items, and then became a master of boosting sales by marketing to different audiences. It is observed that Routledge and the new penny periodicals were simply building on techniques that W. & R. Chambers had been using for over a decade: Steam-powered printing, stereotyping, and cheaply acquired texts were the keys to literature for the masses.
Keywords: railway publishing, George Routledge, cheap works, marketing, Chambers, steam-powered printing, stereotyping
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Money
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 W. & R. Chambers and the Market for Print
- I Organizing a Proper System of Publishing
- 2 Industrial Book Production
- 3 Reaching a National Market
- 4 Production and Steam Power
- 5 New Formats for Information
- 6 Reaching an Overseas Market
- 7 A Modern Printing Establishment
- II Railways and Competition
- 8 The Coming of the Railways
- 9 Centralizing Business in Edinburgh
- 10 Routledge and the New Competition
- 11 Railway Bookstalls
- 12 Instruction in the Railway Marketplace
- 13 The Dignitaries of the Trade Take on Routledge
- III Steamships and Transatlantic Business
- 14 Transatlantic Opportunities
- 15 Getting to Know the American Market
- 16 The Dissemination of Cheap Instruction
- 17 A New Spirit of Engagement
- 18 Building Relationships with Boston and Philadelphia
- 19 Piracy and Shipwreck!
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
